The Russians can't fire missiles accurately

The one huge negative for the Russians in Ukraine is that as the weeks have gone by it is clear they can't shoot straight. Even precision-guided missiles and rockets have missed their targets and have ended up ploughing into apartment blocks. A senior Pentagon official said he believed that the Russians probably didn't mean to hit apartment blocks but their missile guidance systems were so useless they just hit anything that looked big and high. Who knows whether that is true but the fact is many apartment blocks and other civilian property has been struck with shells and missiles and either you believe the Russians are doing it deliberately because they want to kill civilians or they just fire blindly and hope to hit the right target. But precision missiles are supposed to be just that - precise and accurate. The weirdest thing the Russians have done is to fire several hypersonic missiles. On each occasion these super-expensive missiles travelling at more than five times the speed of sound were targeted at buildings. No one in the Pentagon understands why they did that when a normal air-launched bomb could have done the same damage. The answer seems to be that the Russian air force is hardly ever crossing the border into Ukraine to launch attacks. They launch their missiles and bombs from Russian airspace, or if they do need to fly over the border they carry out the bombing and then get the hell out of there because they are scared of being shot down. Many of them have been downed by Ukrainian anti-air missiles. In the Donbas region it's easier for them because it directly borders Russia, so the fighter pilots don't need to fly into Ukrainian airspace. It's very hands-off warfighting. It's the reason why the Russian fighter aircraft are not bombing the convoys of arms that come over the border from eastern Europe into western Ukraine every day. The Ukrainians are cunning of course, using different routes, but because the Russian fighter pilots are reluctant to spend time in UJkrainian airspace, it means the convoys are coming in almost with impunity. The Russians are also running short of precision-guided missiles but acording to the same US defence official they still have a lot of land-attack cruise missiles which can be fired from warships or submarines. These weapons pose the biggest threat to those convoys of Nato arms supplies. But they need to be accurate and so far they have been falling all over the place.